Working Overtime: Long Commutes and Rent-burden in the ...cra.gmu.edu/pdfs/Final report Rent burden...

Working Overtime: Long Commutes and Rent-burden

in the Washington Metropolitan Region

By

Kathryn Howell, PhD

Research Associate

George Mason University School of Public Policy

Center for Regional Analysis

Arlington, Virginia 22201

May, 2014

George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis Page 1

Executive Summary

As the traditional model of commutes changes from a suburb-to-downtown model to one where jobs of

all types are dispersed to suburbs and small cities, the Washington, DC region has become more

interconnected in terms of employment. Employment is not only becoming more geographically diverse,

but a majority of new jobs are in in low- and moderate-wage sectors such as healthcare and education. At

the same time, workers are making longer commutes – either by choice or by necessity – in order to find

the mix of housing, schools, and amenities affordable to them. These commutes have costs – both

financial and social – such as vehicle maintenance, public transportation, parking, gas, and lost time.

Workers commuting for low paying jobs pay disproportionately more of their incomes on vehicle

maintenance and public transportation, which can represent 30% or more of their incomes in the

Washington, DC region1.

Commute-burdened workers, defined as those commuting greater than 60 minutes each way, reside in all

jurisdictions in the Washington, DC region. Among all workers in the region, 16.5% are considered

commute-burdened. The commute burden is greater in the region’s outer suburbs, where 18% of workers

have commutes in excess of 60 minutes, compared with just 6.4% in Arlington and Alexandria.

Commute-burdened workers are most concentrated outside of Arlington, Alexandria and Northwest

Washington, including parts of the District, and close-in suburban communities. The suburban

jurisdictions of Virginia and Maryland are most disproportionately impacted by long commutes.

Rent-burdened households are defined as those paying 30% or more of their incomes towards housing

costs. These communities are also geographically dispersed across the region. Suburban Maryland faces

disproportionately high concentrations of rent-burdened households. African Americans are also more

likely to live in rent- and commute-burdened tracts than any other ethnicity, while white and Asian

residents are more likely to live in low rent-burdened communities.

Among the region’s rent-burdened Census tracts, 55.2% were also commute-burdened. More than half of

these dually-burdened tracts are located in suburban Maryland. The dually-burdened population is

disproportionately African American, lives in older rental units, and is mostly situated in communities

with high poverty and concentrations of housing choice vouchers. Households living in these tracts are

also more likely to be employed in service and sales jobs than the region as a whole. This is particularly

the case in the District where 52.9% of workers were employed in service and sales, compared to 37.6%

of the region’s total workforce. The colocation of Rent burden and Commute burden in communities

where more than half the residents are employed in low- and moderate-wage jobs suggests a need to

address affordable rental housing and improve the employment options across the region.

This research focused exclusively on renters, and does not include homeowners. To determine census

tracts that had high rent and Commute burdens, the regional medians of both measures were derived and

tracts that fell above the median level of each were examined. To determine the tracts that were both rent-

1 Heavy Load: The Combined Housing and Transportation Burdens of Working Families. Center for Housing

Policy, 2006.


and commute-burdened the Rent burden and Commute burden data were combined by the census tracts in

which they were located.

This research examines rent- and commute-burdened census tracts in the Washington, DC region.

Specifically, it examines the geographic distribution of tracts with an over-median percentage of

commutes that are 60 minutes or longer and high Rent burdens. It also discusses the demographics of

those tracts and the jobs for which the residents of those communities commute. Finally, this research

discusses the implications for housing policies across the region.

Summary of Key Findings

Between 2008 and 2013, the Washington, DC region added about 60,000 low-income jobs, 20,000

middle-income jobs, and 45,000 high-income jobs2. The low-income jobs are primarily in the service,

retail, and health and education sectors that are located in all jurisdictions across the region. Meanwhile,

Federal employment has declined to levels not seen since the 1980s. At the same time the rising cost of

housing in the region has pressed more families to move farther from the employment to find housing that

will fit their incomes. These dynamics have forced many workers to commute in excess of 60 minutes,

but, for many families, even such a long commute does not translate to affordable housing.

Key Findings

Although tracts with a high rate of household Rent burden are dispersed across the region, the

Suburban Maryland and Washington, DC tracts are disproportionately rent-burdened.

Comparatively, Suburban Virginia and Arlington/Alexandria are disproportionately represented

in the low rent-burdened tracts.

Low Commute burden is centered in NW Washington, DC, Arlington and Alexandria. Suburban

Maryland and Virginia, as well as Northeast and Southeast Washington, DC are more likely to be

rent-burdened.

Rent-burdened households tend to live in older housing. More than 60% of units in rent-burdened

communities were built before 1980, and only 12.8% were built since 2000, compared to 59%

and 15% in tracts with low rent burdens.

Census tracts with high Rent and Commute burdens are more likely in African American and

Latino communities than in white or Asian communities.

There is significant variation by jurisdiction of Rent- and Commute-burdened census tracts. The

District’s burdened tracts are overwhelmingly African American and poor and dominated by

housing built before 1980. Meanwhile, suburban Virginia tracts with these tracts are largely white

with a disproportionate share of Latinos.

Residents of dually burdened tracts are disproportionately commuting for service, retail and

construction occupations.

2 Dani, Lokesh. The Lower-Wage Recovery in the Higher-Wage Economy of the Washington DC Metropolitan Area.

George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis Working Paper 2013-07.


Rental Housing and Commuting in the Region

Housing prices in the urban core have increased in recent years, particularly along transit corridors,

forcing many households to move farther away in order to rent or buy housing. This trend has led to

increasing costs for commuting – both social and financial. Short commutes have become a luxury for

many households in the region where the shortest commutes are concentrated in the highest income

communities of Arlington, Alexandria, and NW Washington, DC. Longer commutes, meanwhile, exist in

the middle-income Virginia and Maryland and in the low income census tracts of SE and NE Washington,

and southern Prince George’s County, Maryland.

Rent burden, which is defined as paying more that 30% of the household income on rent, is concentrated

in pockets across the region. Many households have made tradeoffs between housing costs and commutes

as may be seen in the middle-income parts of the region where long commutes do not overlap with Rent

burdens. In 55.2% of the tracts where residents are commuting long distances, a high concentration of

households are also paying high percentages of their incomes on rent, leaving less income for food,

utilities, healthcare, and other basic necessities.

Figure 1 maps the commutes by census tract in the region. The median percentage of workers in the

region commuting 60 minutes or longer was 17.5% in 2012. The smallest percentages of Commute

burdens were located close to job centers such as downtown Washington, DC, Arlington, and Alexandria.

Arlington had no tracts in which more than 17.5% of workers had commutes of an hour or more.

Meanwhile, more than 90% of tracts in Charles MD, Stafford, VA, Spotsylvania, VA, Prince William,

VA, and Jefferson, WV had high concentrations of Commute burden. The majority (70.1%) of commuters

in the rent-burdened tracts commuted alone by car, compared to 65.9% of commuters in all tracts.

However, in the commute-burdened tracts in Washington, DC and Prince George’s County, more than

half of the commuters took public transportation.


Figure 1: Commutes Longer than 60 Minutes by Census Tract, 2012

Source: American Community Survey, 2012; George Mason University Center for Regional Analysis

Figure 2 maps the region’s Rent burden. The median percentage of households in each tract paying more

than 30% of their incomes for rent was 45.9%. Unlike the commute patterns, Rent burden is more

geographically heterogeneous, with pockets in all jurisdictions. Maryland had the highest percentage of

overall tracts with 55.7% of all tracts having high concentrations of rent-burdened households, compared

to 43.2% in Virginia. Figure 3 illustrates the distribution of census tracts that have above median

concentrations of Rent burden, Commute burden concentrations, low-rent burden, and both rent and

Commute burdens. Arlington and Alexandria and Suburban Virginia are overrepresented among low-rent

burden tracts3.

3 Arlington and Alexandria were separated from the remainder of the region’s Virginia jurisdictions.


Figure 2: Rent burden by Census Tract, 2012


Figure 3: Geographic Distribution of Rent burden and Commutes


0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

Total Rent Burden Low Rent

Burden

Long Commute Rent Burden and

Long Commutes

DC Arlington/Alexandria Suburban Virginia Suburban Maryland WV


Figure 4 illustrates the demographic characteristics of the region’s census tracts by tract type. African

Americans and Latinos disproportionately live in high-rent burden communities. Regionally, non-

Hispanic whites represent 48.5% of the total population, followed by African Americans (25.8%) Latinos

(13.8%), and Asians (9.3%). African Americans make up 30.2% of the population in commute-burdened

tracts, 30.5% of rent-burdened tracts, and 34.0% in rent- and commute-burdened tracts. Conversely,

Asians and white residents are less likely to live in rent- and commute-burdened tracts and

overrepresented in tracts with low-rent burdens. White and Asian residents represented 55.0% and 10.0%

of the populations in low rent-burdened tracts, respectively.

Figure 4: Demographic Characteristics of Census Tracts by Type, 2012

Total

Commutes

60 minutes

or longer

Rent

Burdened

Rent Burden

and Long

Commute

Low Rent

Burden

African American 25.8% 30.2% 30.5% 34.0% 20.6%

Asian 9.3% 7.8% 8.6% 7.4% 10.0%

Latino 13.8% 12.9% 15.8% 14.5% 11.8%

White 48.5% 46.6% 42.5% 41.6% 55.0%

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%


The age of the rental housing stock varies across census tracts by geography and tract type. Figure 5

illustrates the age of rental units across census tracts. Rent-burdened tracts tend to have concentrations of

older rental units than tracts more generally. Only 24.2% of rental units in rent-burdened tracts were built

since 1990, compared to 27.1% of units in low-burdened tracts and 25.5% of all tracts. However, the data

mask the geographic variation across the region. In the District, for example, only 11.3% of all rental

units have been constructed since 1990, compared to 36.9% in suburban Virginia. This translates to small

changes in jurisdictions like Maryland, where rental housing in burdened communities represents less

than a percentage point difference in terms of age. However, in Arlington and Alexandria, 74.4% of rental

housing units in rent-burdened tracts were built before 1980, compared to just 64.0% in all tracts.

Likewise, in those jurisdictions, 25.0% of rentals in all tracts have been built since 1990, while only

14.4% of units in rent-burdened tracts have been constructed in the past 30 years.


Figure 5: Age of Rental Housing by Census Tract Type


0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Total

Low Rent Burden

Rent Burden and Commute

Long Commutes

Rent Burdened

Since 2000 1990-1999 1980-1989 1960-1979 Before 1960


A Portrait of Rent- and Commute-Burdened Households

When Rent burden concentrations were mapped against Commute burden, there was an overlap of 55.2%

of the tracts. Figure 6 shows the geographic distribution of these tracts. The orange tracts represent the

concentrations of long commutes, while the hatches illustrated the rent-burdened tracts. These tracts were

scattered across the region. Suburban Maryland contributed 52.8% of burdened tracts, followed by

Suburban Virginia (35.8%) and the District (9.8%). Only one tract in Alexandria and no tracts in

Arlington fit this category.

Figure 6: Rent and Commute burden in the Washington, DC Region, 2012


Rent burden and commutes longer than 60 minutes were compared against several categories. For

instance, this research found that 58.8% of commute-burdened and 58.0% of rent-burdened tracts also had

concentrations of Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) use that were above the median for the region (3.3%).

Similarly, both indicators also had abnormally high rates of poverty with 61.0% of all rent-burdened and

58.4% of all commute-burdened tracts having poverty rates above the regional median (5.4%). Figure 7

shows housing need characteristics by jurisdiction in dually burdened census tracts. In the District,

poverty and HCV concentrations were particularly marked. Rent- and commute-burdened tracts in the

District had a 30.9% poverty rate, and 21.6% of all rental housing was inhabited by HCV users. Because

the HCV requires tenants to only pay 30% of their incomes for rent, these households are not included in


the number of rent-burdened households. Conversely, Virginia had the lowest rates of both poverty and

voucher usage in their burdened tracts with 7.6% and 5.3%, respectively.

Figure 7: Household Need in Rent- and commute-burdened Tracts


African Americans disproportionately live in rent- and commute-burdened tracts, representing 34.0% in

all tracts, 91.3% in the District, 40.3% in Maryland, and 15.8% in Virginia. Figure 8 shows the

demographic breakdown of burdened tracts. This is particularly striking when compared against the same

jurisdictional populations as a whole from Figure 4. In the District, African Americans represent just

51.1%, 35.3% in Maryland, and 11.9% in Virginia. Latinos are overrepresented in Virginia only, with

14.8% of the total population, compared to 15.7% in the burdened tracts.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

Rent Burdened Owner Cost

Burden

Housing Choice

Vouchers

Poverty

Washington, DC Maryland Virginia All Jurisdictions


Figure 8: Demographics of Rent- and commute-burdened Tracts


Residents living in rent- and commute-burdened tracts commuted to lower paying jobs than residents in

tracts across the region. Figure 9 shows the distribution of occupations in the region by jurisdiction.

Across the region, 50.9% of workers were employed in management of professional occupations, (median

wage of $60.69 per hour); 15.6% in service ($11.41 per hour), 21.0% in sales ($19.65 per hour), 6.9% in

construction ($22.40 per hour), and 5.6% in transportation ($17.86 per hour)4. In all rent-burdened tracts,

the percentage of workers traveling for managerial and professional occupations fell to 43.0%, while in

the District only 31.4% of workers were in those jobs. Conversely, more than half of the workers who

lived in DC (52.9%) commuted to a service or sales job, compared to 41.4% in Maryland, and 39.3% in

Virginia.

4 US Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2013 Metropolitan and Nonmetropolitan Area Occupational Employment and

Wage Estimates, Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

All

Washington, DC

Maryland

Virginia

African American White Non Hispanic Latino Asian Other


Figure 9: Occupation by Tract, 2012


In spite of paying a larger portion of household income on housing costs, rent- and commute-burdened

household pay lower rents than other renters in their jurisdictions. Figure 10 shows the rent paid by

percentage of households by jurisdictions. Across the region, 31.1% of rent- and commute-burdened

households paid $1,500 per month or greater, compared to 42.4% of all metropolitan region households.

Only 13.2% of burdened tracts in the region had median rents of $2,000 per month or greater compared to

20.5% of all tracts. Of the burdened tracts with rents of $2,000 of greater, none of them were located in

the District, and 77.8% of burdened tracts in the District had a median rent of less than $1,000.

In Virginia, the difference between the rents paid in burdened tracts and Virginia tracts overall was

marginal. However, in the District, 33.3% of all households paid greater than $1,500 per month,

compared to only 9.1% of households in burdened tracts. These figures suggest that perhaps residents are

not making trade-offs between high quality, expensive housing and long commutes. Many of these

residents have chosen housing based on necessity.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Washington,

DC

Maryland Virginia All Burdened

Tracts

All Tracts

Management and Professional Service Sales Constuction Transportation


Figure 10: Gross Rents by Jurisdiction, 2012


*Burdened tracts are defined as having both above median rent burden and commute burden.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Bu

rden

ed All

Bu

rden

ed All

Bu

rden

ed All

Bu

rden

ed All

Total Washington,

DC

Maryland Virginia

$1500+

$1000 to $1500

$500 to $1000

Less than $500


Conclusion and Implications

This analysis focused on the overlay of rent and Commute burden for this research to better understand

the characteristics and communities of residents who live far from their jobs while still paying a premium

for housing. This research suggests that in many cases, these commuters are not paying high rents in order

to access good neighborhoods or schools and are in many cases living in neighborhoods with high

poverty and low connectivity, while working in jobs that do not pay well. As a result of the combination

of low incomes and long commutes, the costs of commuting take up a significant proportion of household

incomes and leave them more heavily burdened than their higher income counterparts.

Commute-burdened workers live in all jurisdictions

Rather than being a the direct result of households moving away from urban cores, households

commuting for greater than 60 minutes live in the District and close-in suburbs, as well as suburban and

exurban communities. With the exception of District and Prince George’s County residents, the majority

of these commuters drove alone. This suggests a dispersed commuting pattern. With the growth of places

like Tyson’s Corner, the I-270 corridor and the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor and the increased demand for

community-level services like healthcare, education, and retail, employment will continue to be dispersed

through the region.

Minorities in the region are disproportionately burdened

Although the District offers an extreme example, African Americans have higher rent and commute

burdens in all parts of the region. Given the greater likelihood of housing discrimination and abuses

(including the areas of leasing, lending, and code violations), this raises questions about what housing

may be available to them in the market. This is especially troubling given the colocation of older housing

units, Rent burden and minority households.

Affordable housing should be dispersed

As the region changes toward a model of increasingly dispersed, low-wage jobs, the provision of

affordable housing should become a regional priority to accommodate the growth in service sector jobs

and to prevent this mix of Rent burdens and commutes. The provision and enabling of affordable housing

development will not only allow existing residents to reduce their commute costs by living closer to work,

but will also enable easier connections between workers and new jobs. For many of these new workers,

the affordability of housing accessible to their jobs may be an important factor in the decision to relocate

to the Washington, DC region.


Economic development activities should focus on rent-burdened communities

Many of the places where workers are doubly burdened are also areas where job growth has not been

robust. This has exacerbated the housing and jobs mismatch that has fueled the commute burdens of

workers in these communities. Economic development in conjunction with improvements to existing

affordable housing stock should be the focus of areas such as Prince George’s County and southeast

Washington, DC. The goals should be to attract a range of jobs to support the diverse skills of those

residents. The growth in high-wage jobs can then fuel the demand for low-wage work to reduce the

commute burden that workers face.

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